Amazon sale set to take on Flipkart's Big Billion Days; bets on small cities, big brands for festive success

As the preparation for festive season has already begun, auto firms to E-commerce companies, all have flooded the market with lucrative offers and schemes to woo buyers. With availability of large selection of products and big brands as well as new customers coming onto its platform, especially from tier II and III towns, E-commerce giant Amazon India is confident of logging strong growth in this festive season.
 
Competing head-on with rival Flipkart, Amazon India has announced that it will commence its festive sale from October 10-15, lining up new launches across various categories. Rival, Walmart-backed Flipkart will host its 'The Big Billion Days' (TBBD) festive sale from October 10-14. It too is expected to dish out massive discount offers.
 
"Each festive sale (Great Indian Festival) has been bigger than the previous one. We feel confident because we have new customers coming in. More than 70 per cent of new customers are expected to come from tier II and III towns," Amazon India Vice President (Category Management) Manish Tiwary told PTI, while adding that big brands like OnePlus, Xiaomi and Samsung across categories like mobile phones, large appliances and others are also lining up their products during the festive sale.
 
Asked about the segments that would drive growth, Tiwary reportedly said that every category is expected to do well with many of them witnessing 10X growth, adding "We expect mobile phones, fashion and large appliances categories to do really well." 
 
Notably, the company is also lining up finance options, including EMI on debit cards and Amazon Pay wallet, to ease purchases through its platform, besides setting up a festive home showcase, where it is displaying more than 1,600 of the over 170 million products available on its platform.
 
According to research firm RedSeer report, about 20 million people would shop on various e-commerce platforms, translating into sales of around USD 3 billion for companies like Amazon and Flipkart, during the festive sale next month. 
 
The RedSeer report further statd that the share of items like electronics and furniture during the sale could be higher this year due to affordability initiatives being undertaken by the e-commerce players. Mobile phones currently account for a lion's share of sales on the two leading e-commerce platforms.
 
Smaller player ShopClues has also announced its sale from October 10-November 7, offering up to 80 per cent discount across fashion and lifestyle, home, kitchen, electronics and accessories categories.
 
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Notably, like offline retail, e-commerce firms have witnessed significant jump in sales during Dussehra and Diwali.